Here’s a walk-through for big gaming convention

1of8The PAX gaming festival expands in 2015 with the debut of PAX South in San Antonio. The event is Friday through Sunday in the Convention Center.
.Photo: Photos courtesy Penny Arcade

2of8The PAX gaming festival expands in 2015 with the debut of PAX South in San Antonio, Jan. 23-25 at the Convention Center. The show covers all facets of gaming, from consoles and PCs to handhelds and tabletop gaming.Photo: Penny Arcade / Penny Arcade

3of8The PAX gaming festival expands in 2015 with the debut of PAX South in San Antonio, Jan. 23-25 at the Convention Center. The show covers all facets of gaming, from consoles and PCs to handhelds and tabletop gaming.Photo: Penny Arcade / Penny Arcade

4of8The PAX gaming festival expands in 2015 with the debut of PAX South in San Antonio, Jan. 23-25 at the Convention Center. The show covers all facets of gaming, from consoles and PCs to handhelds and tabletop gaming.Photo: Penny Arcade / Penny Arcade

5of8The PAX gaming festival expands in 2015 with the debut of PAX South in San Antonio, Jan. 23-25 at the Convention Center. The show covers all facets of gaming, from consoles and PCs to handhelds and tabletop gaming.Photo: Penny Arcade / Penny Arcade

6of8Like PAX Prime in Seattle and PAX East in Boston, PAX South will cover all facets of gaming and also feature live music.Photo: Penny Arcade / Penny Arcade

8of8PAX South logo. The PAX gaming festival expands in 2015 with the debut of PAX South in San Antonio, Jan. 23-25 at the Convention Center. The show covers all facets of gaming, from consoles and PCs to handhelds and tabletop gaming.Photo: Penny Arcade / Penny Arcade

Like a warrior in a role-playing video game, Robert Khoo was on a quest for glory of the mostly digital variety.

Khoo, the show director of the PAX gaming festival, already has won over the coasts with PAX Prime in Seattle and PAX East in Boston, each a colorful showcase of console, computer and tabletop games that draws tens of thousands of avid attendees.

Now PAX wanted to make its mark somewhere in between. So for two years, Khoo scoured the nation’s central corridor for that next PAX home. When he finally hit San Antonio, he only had six hours in town.

“I would say within an hour I had fallen in love with the city,” Khoo said. “I just realized that this was where PAX South was going to be.”

Quest over — now the real games begin. The first PAX South runs Friday through Sunday at the Convention Center. Gamers of all ages and skill levels will celebrate, discover and, most important, play just about anything that explodes to life on a screen or in the imagination.

Like its predecessors, PAX South already has legions of fans eager to press START. Three-day passes and Saturday-only passes are sold out; though Friday and Sunday tickets were available at press time for $30 each. Online registration is at south.paxsite.com/registration.

So what can you expect from this newest leg of the gaming expo?

Here’s a PAX primer with Khoo as your guide.

What is PAX anyway?

PAX is short for Penny Arcade Expo. The gaming festival was created by the gaming wiseacres behind the gaming Web comic Penny Arcade. (Notice a trend here?) Like the hit online comic, PAX serves up nerdy fun that covers all facets of gaming culture, highlighting the communities that make their voices heard through game controllers and headsets, as well as fantasy trading cards and polyhedral dice.

PAX began in 2004 as a gathering of 4,500 fans in Bellevue, Washington. It’s since leveled up to two major shows — PAX East and PAX Prime. In 2013, PAX took its game Down Under with the debut of PAX Aus in Melbourne, Australia.

PAX South in San Antonio marks the event’s latest North American show. PAX also caters to developers with PAX Dev, which takes place just before PAX Prime.

PAX isn’t kid’s stuff.

True, PAX welcomes gamers of all ages, and Khoo said video games are still thought of as toys for kids. Yet much like the age of the average game player — 31 years old, according to the Entertainment Software Association — PAX-goers tend to skew a good decade past voting age.

“The average age of our attendees is 29 years old at this point,” Khoo said. “We’re talking about professionals. We’re talking about those that have gone through college, that have been in the military, that are still sort of in their 20s and 30s that love games.”

Expect plenty of small independent game developers among the big names.

Major game publishers and developers show off their wares so gamers can get an inside look at what’s headed to their twitchy fingers. At PAX, though, the little guys loom large, too.

So while you’ll find heavy hitters at PAX South like BioWare (developer of the multiple Game of the Year award-winner “Dragon Age: Inquisition”) and Gearbox Software (the developer famous for the “Borderlands” franchise), Khoo said you should keep your eyes out for the many two- and three-person teams with new releases.

“Checking out the indie section and the indie developers that are on the show floor is definitely a highlight,” he said.

Of course, you can just hang out to play games.

Who needs the couch when you have so much freeplay at PAX? The Console Freeplay area lets you perch at your favorite next-gen and old-school game consoles, with hundreds of systems and titles to choose from. Those who crave more gigs can hit the PC Area and even go BYOC (that’s “bring your own computer”). And those who prefer more portable action can nestle into the beanbags of the Handheld Lounge.

Compete against fellow gamers for fortune and glory.

Think you really got game? Bring it to PAX South’s gaming tournaments. All sign-ups are in the morning, Khoo said, with dozens of tourneys each featuring about 32 players for friendlier, more intimate competition.

If you’re lucky, you might get picked for the Omegathon.

The Omegathon is a raucous three-day elimination tournament in which 20 random registrants battle it out over six rounds of, well, just about anything. If it’s geeky and competitive, it’s pretty much fair game.

“There’s so much luck involved it’s ridiculous,” Khoo said. “The games that we choose, you can’t really practice for them.”

The Omegathon concludes Sunday with a final round that features a surprise title to beat. PAX notes on its website it could be a new, unreleased game, a throwback from yesteryear or even that giant claw machine from the pizza parlor. The Omegathon winner gets an all-expenses paid trip to any PAX in the world.

You can go analog with tabletop gaming, too.

Tabletop game fans get plenty of love at PAX. The PAX Tabletop area serves unplugged diversions from role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons to nontraditional boardgames such as The Settlers of Catan to trading card games like Magic: The Gathering.

What’s a gaming con without some beats beyond the beeps? PAX features several live acts, including the electropop outfit Freezepop, nerdcore hip-hop artist MC Frontalot and video game cover band the OneUps. PAX South concerts unfold Friday and Saturday nights.

“Pretty much they are concerts dedicated to gaming culture,” Khoo said. “I think that every musical genre follows different communities. And games are no different.”

Get the free app.

PAX South has an official app so you’re always dialed in to the what, where and when of the panels, presentations and other things to see. Look for PAX South in the Apple App Store and Google Play.

René A. Guzman is a features writer for the San Antonio Express-News. He writes about geek and pop culture as well as consumer gadgets and technology, and writes a blog called Geek Speak that covers comic books, tabletop gaming and other geek culture in San Antonio and beyond. He has also written about health and fitness and other consumer topics. In addition to the Express-News, Guzman's work has appeared in the Baltimore Sun, Beaumont Enterprise, Chicago Tribune, Houston Chronicle and San Francisco Chronicle. Before joining the Express-News in December 1998, the San Antonio native co-owned a college humor magazine named Bitter, for which he wrote, designed and edited, as well as distributed at various campuses and businesses citywide.